Parse string with whitespace and quotation mark (with quotation mark retained)

Question

If I have a string like this

create myclass \"56, \'for the better or worse\', 54.781\"

How can I parse it such that the resul

Answer 1

Regex Demo

(\w+|"[^"]*")

Get the matches in the first capture group.

1. \w+: Matches alphanumeric characters and underscore one or more times
2. "[^"]*": Matches anything that is wrapped in double quotes
3. |: OR condition in regex

Answer 2

I would use a real csv-parser for this task. The only one available in the framework is the TextFieldParser-class in the VisualBasic namespace:

string str = "create myclass \"56, 'for the better or worse', 54.781\"";
var allLineFields = new List<string[]>();
using (var parser = new Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser(new StringReader(str)))
{
    parser.Delimiters = new string[] { " " };
    parser.HasFieldsEnclosedInQuotes = true;  // important
    string[] lineFields;
    while ((lineFields = parser.ReadFields()) != null)
    {
        allLineFields.Add(lineFields);
    }
}

Result:

But there are others available like this or this.

Answer 3

You can split by this

\s(?=(?:[^"]*"[^"]*")*[^"]*$)

See demo.

https://regex101.com/r/fM9lY3/60

string strRegex = @"\s(?=(?:[^""]*""[^""]*"")*[^""]*$)";
Regex myRegex = new Regex(strRegex, RegexOptions.Multiline);
string strTargetString = @"create myclass ""56, 'for the better or worse', 54.781""";

return myRegex.Split(strTargetString);